Far Above Our Poor Power
by Stephen Ratliff
Summary: Marrissa Story #22. Marrissa honors those who died under her command as Fighter Commander on the Stargazer with a personal ritual


**Far Above Our Poor Power**

It was a small island separated only by a fast flowing channel from Star Fleet's Essex Fighter Academy. Tall trees filled its edges, obscuring its center save a tall towering flagpole, topped with the blue and white Federation Flag.

Captain Marrissa Amber Picard, commander Endeavor, approached the bridge to the island on foot, as she did every time she had returned to Essex since the end of the Dominion War. She was a Princess of this world, and often took that as an excuse to avoid the uncomfortable dress uniform, but not today. Today demanded her full dress uniform, with its medals and honors. Her task did not demand this because of orders, or customs. She did it because to do anything less would dishonor them.

Her boots echoed on the bridge as she crossed, the orderly beat much like that of the honor guard approaching. She stepped off the bridge onto the black slate path. It was fall, and trees had begun to turn from their normal deep blue-green to a golden yellow hue. Marrissa slowed her pace, preparing herself for her self-inflicted penance for being one of those that had survived.

The clearing ahead was filled with a large blue-gray slate-paved circle, the same dimension as that of the saucer of the Stargazer. Two long pools of water, the shape of its warp engines stretched outward, and a tall ivory pillar stood between them, slanted back to touch the flag pole. At its front were seven marble fighter craft profiles. The lead one's registry read "Dominion War" and was covered with engraved names of those who would never return to this hallowed ground near where they had received their wings.

Marrissa's fingers rested on the gold wings pinned to her chest. They weighed heavily on her. As it always was when she visited this slate circle of honor, she wondered, irrationally, if there had been anything she could have done to prevent there from being any names on this Memorial Island. Then she took out a long folded sheet of parchment. She had written the names of every pilot that had died under her command on this parchment. Marrissa remembered when she'd written the first of them, and when she had written the last, the hundred and first.

The paper was tear-spattered, and had gotten more tears on it over the years. It had never escaped a visit to this isle without it. The names were still readable, though, and in the steady voice, Marrissa began to read them aloud. One hundred and one names. One hundred and one men and women, humans, Bajoran, Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites, and Betaziods, all of which Marrissa had known.

She paused after each name, trying to recall the face that went with the name. Some were easy, they had been under her command for a long time. Others were hard, and had gotten harder over the years. Marrissa tried. It was those names that were important. Those names were more important than all the battles she'd won, the medals she'd earned, and the promotions she'd been given. They deserved to be remembered.

The Stargazer had been the best ship she'd ever served on, and they the best crew she had ever served. They had taken a fifteen-sixteen-year-old girl and turned her into a woman. Credit should not lay with her, but with the crew, those people that were just names on this marble monument to others. Tears began to flow as she reached the fiftieth name, each name causing her soul to ache as she brought their faces to mind.

It was not easy to work through this list of names. This list of memories of those that should not, could not, be forgotten brought tears. Tears of sadness, tears of morning, tears for those whose lifes had been cut all to short. Marrissa's voice began to catch with each name, and she tried to make each name clear and strong, as she stood at the head of the slate circle.

Tears continued to come, flowing unhampered down Marrissa's cheeks. Finally the last name was reached, the last fighter pilot to die under her command during the seven hundred and forty-two days of the Dominion war. Her gaze moved up again from the once again tear-wetted parchment, to the inclined reflective metal serving as the windshield of the lead fighter. It reflected the sky above, the fast-moving clouds on this cool fall day.

Marrissa did not enter the slate circle. She did not approach the pillar with the names of those who died on the carriers in support of the hallowed named she had just finished reading. Instead she folded her list up once again, and slid it under her uniform jacket. She stood at attention for a full two minutes, her right hand in the old salute, looking upwards at the Federation Flag flying above the monument.

Then she broke her salute, and about faced, with the precision she'd learnt when she had been Chief of Security on the Enterprise. She left nothing behind as she marched out of the memorial. They had given their last measure in service of their worlds. She could add nothing more.

_"But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hollow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract."_

_- excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863._


End file.
